Earlier this month, Canada’s opposition party selected a new leader. Ordinarily, such an event would attract little attention outside the country and would not be expected to greatly influence politics around the world.
But Stéphane Dion is different. The new head of the Liberal Party ran a campaign that was heavily focused on the environment – a strategy dismissed by his rivals and by the press. His victory means that a political showdown over Canada’s wilting commitment to the Kyoto treaty on climate change is imminent. The outcome may foreshadow the role that climate change will play in the next presidential election in the US.
Last month Canada’s environment minister Rona Ambrose, a member of the ruling Conservative party, who hails from oil-rich Alberta, told the UN conference in Nairobi, Kenya, that “Canada remains strongly committed to Kyoto”. But the government, elected earlier this year, has yet to live up to these words. At a recent Senate committee meeting Ambrose stated the government’s intention to renege on a pledge to cut carbon emissions to 6 per cent below 1990 levels by 2012. “We cannot meet the target. We have ample evidence that this is not feasible,” she said.
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In October, the government outlined its own plan for regulating greenhouse gases. The plan delays any regulations on emissions until 2010 and then calls for cuts only in greenhouse gas intensity, which is a measure of the carbon produced per dollar of economic activity – a formula that allows total emissions to continue to rise as long as the economy is growing. There would be no absolute reduction in emissions until after 2020, then deeper cuts of 45 to 65 per cent around 2050.
Environmental campaigners fear that such policies will make it that much harder to persuade the US, the world’s biggest carbon emitter, to make significant cuts of its own. It could also harm efforts to convince major nations such as China and India to sign up to emission reductions – a crucial step if the world is to avert the worst of climate change in the decades to come.
However, Dion, who beat off several candidates to the post of opposition leader, hopes to lead the fight to bring Canada back onto a Kyoto-friendly path. Already, the House of Commons environment committee has moved a bill, co-sponsored by Dion, that calls on the government to meet its Kyoto targets. “We’ve got to make this the issue for the next election,” says John Godfrey, the Liberal environment spokesman. With the Conservatives in a minority position, the next election could be only months away. Dion’s ascendancy ensures it will attract attention well outside Canada’s borders.
